Five Words - Claudia Brown
by Sally Mn
Summary: For a challenge I was given five words and had to write ficlets on each for Claudia. The words were unpicking, nebulousness, flippable, forsake, and millipedes...


**Five Word Ficlets... Claudia Brown**

**Unpicking**

The first time Claudia saw long extinct flowers - or proto-flowers, if she understood the combined babbling of all three academics, and she wasn't sure she did - they were small, yellowish-green, unimpressive and smelt horrible.

And Abby wanted to pick them and take them back to their own time, as feed for her admittedly cute, troublesome, surprisingly voracious little flying... thing. Abby wanted to take a _lot_ back. And Abby needed a lot of hands to pick and carry them, as well as someone to explain to their cranky boss when they _got_ back why they had brought something even more noxious than protoceratops dung or megaladon entrails.

Captain Ryan and his men looked to her. Nick and Stephen both shrugged, and looked at her. Connor looked first at her, then at Abby, then at the flowers... then, trying to be willing, back at her.

Claudia thought of the expression on Lester's face if they brought back armfuls of the stinky things, was tempted, was so tempted. But even as she reached down, she couldn't help taking a breath...

And left them unpicked.

Little Rex would have to get used to nursery food...

**~oOo~**

**Nebulousness**

Claudia had been well trained in the civil service, and she knew the rules of writing official reports and memoranda. When in doubt, prevaricate. When in a lot of doubt, prevaricate in a lot more words, imprecise words, nebulous words. Say nothing, and say it as wordily as possible.

She's not all that _good _at nebulousness though. She'll certainly never be as good as Lester, who trained under the legendary Appleby, but she is quickly learning how to waffle with the best of them. ("...all probabilities considered and without making undue possible allowances...")

And what with the anomalies, the giant insects, the dodos, the not-dinosaurs big and small, the... all of _them_, and even worse, her _scientists_! - oh yes, she's getting a lot of practice ("...somewhat indefinite and inexplicit nature of the media accounts...") in obfuscation.

Which, she allowed, would be useful when writing her report into how her little team of 'experts' had lost a pair of ("...arguably marginal and peripheral nature of the identification, and uncertain provenance of the creatures in question...") _prehistoric mega-rats _somewhere in the lower levels of Harrods.

She stared at the computer screen, deleted the six and a half paragraphs that had taken all evening, and willed words - _any _words - to come.

_They were big. They were prehistoric rat things. They were last seen heading for the Food Hall._

She had a sinking feeling that _no_ amount of nebulousness was going to make this report any better...

**~oOo~**

**Flippable** (which means something is floppy and loose, according to the dictionaries :)

The... _thing_ flopped down on top of her, its huge leathery wings drooping over her head, its wrinkled and quite hideous head landing half in her lap, its huge goggle eyes... well goggling.

It gave a thin, wavering, sound halfway between a belch and a cheep... and flumped into oblivion as the elephant-strength tranquiliser Captain Ryan had shot into it finally worked.

She supposed she really _should_ have panicked, screamed, possibly fainted, liked the last three, four... oh, how many was it now? - times she'd tangled with something big and ugly and no-she-didn't-_care_-how-harmless-Connor-said-it-was scary, but it was late, she was tired, and her shoes were pinching.

She sighed, pushed the head and wings away, and glared at her 'rescuers' as they trotted up to help.

She'd scream later.

**~oOo~**

**Forsake **

Claudia felt oddly alone as she watched Nick turn away, back towards the anomaly, back towards the past where his damned wife was up to... whatever Helen was up to. She wanted to touch her lips where he'd kissed her, but "stuff professionalism!" (as she'd said to Lester, _and_ enjoyed it) only went so far.

After all, she would still have to work with all these people after Nick came back.

He would come back. With or without that woman.

Claudia wouldn't forsake hope for the future, hope that he would come back. He'd wouldn't forsake that future with her, would he?

And when he does, she thought, just before everything went away, they really might live happily ever af-

**~oOo~**

**Millipedes**

At least they weren't six feet long this time.

Two feet was quite enough.

In fact, six feet might have been preferable, at least _then _the things wouldn't be able to try and crawl into the hole in the wall, the only hiding place available, that she was currently and painfully squeezed into with...

"You okay?" It was Connor, peering up at her anxiously with bloodshot, blurry eyes.

Claudia paused in her whacking (with a broken chair leg) at legs, mandibles or anything else that tried to poke into their tiny shelter, and gave him a smile that was meant to be reassuring but was probably too wobbly for that. She _was _annoyed, as this mess really wouldn't have gotten so _messed _without Connor's thoughtless, impulsive, gleeful running off so she had _had_ to go after him, but she was also rather touched. _He_ was the one who had tried to make it up to her by keep the things from getting to her. _He _was the one who'd been bitten, at least three times. _He_ was the one the ambulance (and by god there had _better_ be an ambulance when the soldiers got them out of this) was waiting for.

_He _was the one who she sometimes thought more trouble than he was worth. Like Abby. Like Stephen. Like Nick. Heaven help her, definitely like Lester.

"You okay?" he said again, voice slurring a little. She shifted, letting him lean against her a little more comfortably, and used one hand to touch his gently (the other hand was still whacking at mandibles).

"I'm fine, Connor."

"'M sorry."

"I know."

... and he was the one who, like Abby, like Stephen, like Nick, like... all right, _maybe_ like Lester (or maybe not) she _knew_ was more than worth any amount of trouble he could make.

**-the end-**


End file.
